FingerNailFixer

First Look: Doug Schoon's Newest Book for Nail Techs

by Holly Schippers | February 29, 2016 | Bookmark +

I finally finished editing Doug Schoon’s newest book- wow! There is a lot of information in there. I am so antsy for everyone to get a chance to read it. He answers questions from nail professionals with facts and science that you can in turn use to answer your own questions, as well as those of your guests. I got permission from Doug to share an excerpt from the book with you so you can see just how awesome the information will be!

13:4 The area of my school in which I perform services is not as well-lit as I need. I want to purchase a table lamp, but I realized that some of the lamps are LED.  Will an LED table lamp affect LED-cured gels? What type of close lighting would you suggest?

I agree that you need good lighting and it sounds like the school should consider making an improvement in their lighting conditions, because poor lighting can be a safety hazard and create unnecessary risk.  However, I need to explain that LED means “light emitting diode,” which makes it a type of light bulb and NOT a type of light. It’s a big myth that LED is the type of light coming out of the “bulb,” but it’s not! LEDs are just the bulb and many different colors can be emitted by LEDs. In fact, they can be made to emit every color of the rainbow, from red to violet. To clarify, I’m using the word “bulb” in the everyday sense, meaning something that actually emits light when enough electrical power is supplied, as in incandescent light bulb.  Some refer to these as lamps or globes.  For our purposes, we’ll consider these to be the same as bulbs.

The mistake that some make is to assume a new kind of light is emitted and it is called “LED,” and this LED stuff cures UV gels so you don’t need to use UV. Wrong! This is a BIG mistake that many are making, including some doctors who are putting this misinformation on the Internet or misleading reporters when they are interviewed. The facts are the vast majority of LED’s sold couldn’t cure a single nail product. It’s overly simplistic to assume that all LEDs emit UV. Most of them do NOT.

Yes, a few types of LEDs like those used in UV nail lamps are specially designed so that they emit UV, but these are unique and special application within the wider world of LEDs. Even so, your question is a good one because many types of light bulbs also emit low levels of UV, including halogen lamps. You should be careful about what you use in the salon if you use UV gels. If you aren’t curing UV gels, then any type of table lamp that you chose would likely be fine.

Make sure you follow Doug on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to see when the book is released!

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